User blog:Deadcoder/Deadcoder's Reviews: A Bad Turn
Throughout Code Lyoko, especially in the earlier seasons, Aelita was a poorly used character in many ways. Yes, she could warp her reality to her whims, but she relied on an idiot, stereotypical introverted German, Token minority domestic abuser, and a french engineer to keep from getting killed. She was completely insane, but everyone saw it as minor breakfast conversation. Many viewers, including me, thought "Oh my god Aelita, you are useless." So when this episode first came out, it was loved by many despite its problems, because it addressed the problems of the show. At the same time, it was one of the rare cases where XANA recycled and updated an attack. Sebastien Viaud seemed to be screaming "You can do better" in this script. It's no wonder he only wrote one episode. In many ways, this is less like reviewing a typical episode, and more like reviewing a deconstruction fanfic that somehow got animated. But it is the goal of Deadcoder's Reviews to review all of Code Lyoko, from the good "mmm. shower scenes..." to the bad "WHO THE HELL WRITES A CLIP SHOW!"; and this episode is no different. So let us move forward with this review =The Review= "A Bad Turn" starts off with the group returning via the sewers, examining talking about their latest Carthage mission, with Ulrich affectionately helping Yumi out of the sewer. She awkwardly leaves, with Ulrich wanting to go after her, and stopping himself. The others are just as annoyed as the audience at the ongoing unresolved tension. :Aelita: "Whispering" Odd, Jeremie; I'm sick of this. I say we just lock them in a room until they screw or kill eachother. :Jeremie: "whispering" Aelita, I know your memory has continuity problems on par with American comic books, but Xana already tried that. :Aelita: damn it. :Odd: Didn't Xana try to bake them alive during that? :Aelita: He was trying to get the steamy going. What? I found out about that from the console during the mission. It DOES have access to Xana's memory. :Jeremie: It's closer than we'll ever get. We can't use my room. Electronics and moisture don't go together. Remember when the supercomputer cooling system broke and fried some of the boards? :Aelita: How can I forget? It fried the GPU and turned me into a MissingNo-like entity. Did you know that Flying is a Lyoko Warrior type? :Jeremie: No, but it's a good idea. Maybe we could use Odd and Ulrich's room. :Odd: NO WAY! He's German, and she's Japanese. I don't want to know what kind of unspeakable things they will get into, and I don't want Kiwi to see it! :Jeremie: "shudders" Wow, a German person and a Japanese person, with a useless Italian person. and come to think of it, a french person who can't do anything, and a vaguely Scandinavian person we've folded into the group. Are we horrible people? :Aelita: we're dysfunctional. There's a difference. In the time of this conversation, Yumi has made it home, to see her stalker, William. He claims to be crazy, which is probably true, given that he'll eventually join the lyoko warriors. Ulrich catches up, complete with jealousy! William calls out the stupid love triangle plot. At the dormitory building, Odd, Jeremie, and Aelita are talking about the latest idiot that Odd dated. Ulrich shows up depressed, and Jeremie and Aelita leave. Given that they go at the same time, it's like they're trying to rub it in Ulrich's face as turns to masturbate at the frustrated antics of their web of love and dysfunction. It seems that the Aplot's tower is being activated as well as the C plot's tower. The next day is driver's ed. This is one of the few times that the school actually encourages safety and Mr. Delmas isn't a moron. The main characters will threaten safety and intelligence instead, because this is pseudo-communist france, where everything is shared. We get an irritating moment with Jim. Back at the factory, someone apparently rigged the scanners to steam crabs. Hey, they might as well do something with the waste heat that goes in the cooling system. Sadly for my suspension of disbelief, the cop is actually portrayed as competent, safety-minded, and intelligent; which is excessively unrealistic, even by the standards of a show that shows a computer program that can make snow. At the same time, with Ulrich and Yumi, the coinflip says this week... Ulrich is angry at Yumi! She finds out that he stalked her and saw her with William. At the same time, Sissi causes a car accident. Everyone is driving poorly. Odd takes the wheel. :3 seconds later, there is screaming and running. :Jeremie: EVERYONE! GET TO THE SCIENCE BUILDING'S BASEMENT! :Crowd is running. Aelita stays behind. :Jeremie: Aelita, are you crazy?! :Aelita: Yes, but that's not the Aelita Option I'm invoking. I'm doing the angry music! :Car approaches Aelita... :Aelita, in the do re mi.. tone, FREEEENNNNCCCCHHHH, ENNNNGGGGIIINNNEEE EEERRRRIIINNNNG!!!! :Car explodes right in front of Aelita. :Aeltia slips out of her fantasy... :Aeltia: Jeremie, on the next mission, is it okay if I do something other than the Aeltia options? William uses incredibly lame verbal punches and Ulrich uses actual punches, because being subtle and being dead are the same. They end up in detention. :Mr. Delmas: THIS IS UNSPEAKABLE! VIOLENCE ISN'T THE ANSWER TO YOUR PROBLEMS! If it were, your problems with Yumi would have finished a semester ago. :Ulrich: How do you know about that? :Delmas: There isn't a person on this campus who DOESN'T know about your giant love dodecahedron. I understand it's common pillow talk with Odd's girl of the week. What? You're bound to hear a couple of things when one of your students singlehandedly causes the school to have to start buying pregnancy tests by the industrial shipping container. BTW, when you see Odd, tell him that he's paying for the nurse's overtime. Back in the schoolyard, Jeremie uses a line so sappy that even Odd makes fun of it. Beeping makes Aelita look at Jeremie's laptop, as she notices towers 3 and 4 activate. They work their way to the factory, knowing that Ulrich is too unreliable to be worth the effort. Back at the Ishiyama house, we get a scene with Yumi's family. We see her dad talk about work and why he's home early. He asks about her dictionary. Hiroki plays some game. This is what I loved about seasons 1 and 2: the rich secondary cast. The Japanese family is unfased by an earthquake, despite being in france. Akiko gets two seconds of slasherscream at the krab, as they cut to the factory. In the factory, there's another krab. Hiroki, being genre savy, calls the only sane one, Yumi to deal with his Krab. Odd isn't really shocked. :Odd: Hey XANA! Massive Krabs? Do you know what this is for me?! Tuesday! Odd promptly leroy jenkins, leaving the useful people to go to the scanners. XANA has learned this week. He's used his plan from False Start, but with decent monsters. And he's taken out two of the scanners so they can't use the season 2 virtualization music! I have to admit, the shot of the destroyed scanner room is GORGEOUS! This show and Skyland are the reasons I like Frederic Perrin. Aelita gets sent in with the horror movie piano music. Odd is about to use the scanner, but a Krab destroys it. Back in detention, Jim notices that the school is more of a death trap than usual this week. The last scanner gets destroyed, Yumi tries to get past a useless cop "finally, some reality", and Ulrich and William notice the second Krab. On Lyoko, Aelita is slow motioning her way to the tower on the overboard. One of the krabs is stalking Ulrich, and Yumi is in a round-2-horror-movie-victim-setup. Ulrich takes out his krab by hitting the eye, which they are all apparently too stupid to do to the Scyphozoa or the Tarantulas in the first episode of this season. On Lyoko, Aelita is turning the Mountain Sector into a skatepark, because her fun is totally worth more than other people's lives. Near the toolshed, we have a cinematic atrocity. A scene was cut for being too violent. There was supposed to be a fight scene between Ulrich and William here, but it was cut. I think the reduced version sucks. William's dialog is poorly put together. At the Ishiyama house, we find out that the family is hiding on the second floor, and the Samurai suit makes a comeback. Though it's cheesy, there's just something funny about a Japanese family being attacked by seafood. It's in that same morbid humor category as seeing a cop get arrested. On Lyoko, Hornets attack Aelita, and she doesn't do any Aelita options. Instead, she dodges the shots with grace and skill. Ulrich infodumps to Jeremie. On Lyoko, Aelita takes out several hornets with nothing but kickass piloting. This is Aelita at her best, because she finally FINALLY is able to take out the monsters on her own, and actually accomplish a task. I think this is what Aeltia was initially conceived as: a character who has unlocked goddess mode. Since all the competence has been channeled to Aelita this episode, there's none left for anyone else. Yumi and Takeho are taken out by a krab and Odd is hiding in the small machine room. But just when all hope is lost, Ulrich grabs a Katana, and forces the dramatic music to switch to the season 2 virtualization music out of sheer bloody mindedness! He then uses an amazingly lame action hero line, as Yumi gasps at her rescue. It's as if they forced a horror scene into becoming an action comedy by carjacking the soundtrack. At the same time, Aelita is wondering which Aelita option to use, she remembers: "The laws of scale don't apply on Lyoko! Areas can be as big or small as the plot demands with no regards to their containers!" She uses this to allow two Hornets to collide with eachother as she has Jeremie devirtualize the overboard. She then uses crazy ninja hearing to destroy the Hornets. At the same time in the factory, William uses the advantage of the season 2 virtualization music to make a car in a renault factory work. The driving scenes are good for motion handling. At the same time, XANA rolls out the big guns: A tarantula and the Scyphozoa. However, William and Odd combine baddass driving with bugsbunny attack. Back at the Ishiyama house, Xana gets genre savy. He knows that the Warrior's petty internal conflicts are more capable of defeating the warriors than he is. With that in mind, he uses the power of shipping to put Hiroki in danger. Back on Lyoko, Aelita goes back to what she does best, the long single note of angry music. She deploys a clone to trick the Scyphozoa, and runs to the tower. She then JustInTimes the Krab and Jeremie hits the reset button. We get some facial expressions that don't match dialog, resulting in Yumi's confusion, after Ulrich drives better. CREDITS! Review Summary This episode is a microcosm of the series. It's well made filler. At the same time, it's a good break from the series itself. This episode is a good example of how guest writers can breath life into a show. Aelita finally shows that she's more than a Princess Peach character, and shows that despite not having weapons, she really is one of the Lyoko Warriors. Instead of everyone thinking "Aelita, you're useless", this episode actually applies logic to Aelita, doing something other than the Aelita options, and doing something with her that isn't fights, despair, or insanity. At the same time, the 2d animation was at a peak in this episode. The Krabs are well translated to Earth, and the sets were well used. The characters were better than usual, with the Ishiyama family doing something other than fight, and having Sissi do something other than get all hot and bothered for Ulrich. Mr. Delmas acts more rationally than usual, and William shows us the character depth that we rarely got to see, since he was mainly created to further inflate drama. Xana was more intelligent than usual, with a subtle plan that would have worked if Aelita didn't have a crowning moment of baddass; and Xana also recycled a previous scheme with major improvements "using a monster that doesn't suck". Overall, this episodes had some amazing 2d animation, a gripping storyline, and some of the best character use. The only flaws I can think of are some censorship by the writers. Consequently, the overall rating for "A Bad Turn" is 9/10. It's some of the best filler Code Lyoko did. On a related note, I would like to answer a question one of my readers asked: "What are you willing to review of Code Lyoko? Will you review fanfics?" To that, I answer the following: "Code Lyoko episodes, Code Lyoko Evolution episodes, Code Lyoko games, Code Lyoko books, Code Lyoko toys, Code Lyoko pointless merchandise "think bedsheets", and fanfiction that isn't halfassed when I'm done with the actual episodes." I take requests, but if I don't have the item in question, it's up to the requester to provide a legal instance of the thing to be reviewed. On a more serious unrelated note; I would like to thank all of my readers for enjoying my reviews. I would like to ask for a minor form of appreciation. I'm not making a Patreon account. Instead, I would like to ask all of you to, by lawful means only, set aside some money for a medical research group, the Foregen Organization: foregen.org. Foregen is working on researching regenerative medicine for victims of a specific type of non-consensual plastic surgery, that I can't mention on this blog, because of wiki content rules. However, this is a charity that is worthy of help, and I would like you all to try. In leu of donations to support Deadcoder's Reviews, I would like all of my viewers to donate some money to Foregen to aid medical research. Thank you all again for enjoying this review, and I hope it made you think about something. Category:Blog posts Category:A Bad Turn